wisconsin school of economic sociology

Something about yourself

WSES 2025 Meeting

April 18-19, 2025

University of Wisconsin-Madison

keynote address

Benjamin Bradlow, Princeton University

with the generous support of the World Interdisciplinary Network for Institutional Research (WINIR)

In its prime, economic sociology was premised on the moral and communal contours of economic life, with research centered on questions of embeddedness, relational work, and performativity. But in recent years, the limits of these perspectives have become apparent. As previous agendas grow stale, the field is increasingly rudderless. There is no consensus as to what questions, if any, it seeks to answer. Worse yet, it is politically impotent — effectively divorced from policymaking and lacking any real capacity to transform the world. This does not bode well if the world in question happens to be on fire.

Yet there may be reason for cautious optimism. As global leaders sound the death knell of neoliberalism, so too have scholars begun re-engaging the macrosociological. In response to decades of tax evasion and capital flight, they are exploring central banking and democratic finance. In response to the climate crisis, they are grappling with questions of state power and green planning. And in response to technological transformations, they are interrogating platform capitalism and digital currency.

What is now urgently needed is an agenda capable of weaving together these threads. The WSES 2025 Meeting contributes to this goal by drawing together a variety of presentations under a new theoretical framework. Our contention is that economic sociology’s perennial topics — markets, money, law, firms, states, and the like — must be conceptualized not as sites of cultural exchange but as a matrix of institutions and protocols. Drawing on the best of economic sociology, political economy, and institutionalisms old and new, we are interested in mapping the “rules of the game.” Because it is only by attending closely to these rules that we might begin to ponder how to change them.

panel 1: Low-Carbon Futures, part 1

I-Lun Shih, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

İrem İnal, University of California-Berkeley

Manasi Karthik, Johns Hopkins University

Gabriel Kahan, University of Wisconsin-Madison

April 18

panel 2: Sociologies of Finance, part 1

Julian Jürgenmeyer, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies

Taylor Barrett, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Nicholas Occhiuto, Hunter College

Dongzhen Wang, Heidelberg University

panel 3: Labor & Society

Daniel Seel, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Alexandre Guelerman, University of Wisconsin-Madison

panel 4: Theoretical Horizons, part 1

Aaron Pitluck, Illinois State University

Robert Freeland, University of Wisconsin-Madison

panel 5: Political Economy Revived

Matthias Thiemann, Sciences Po

James Rosenberg, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Martino Comelli, Slovak Academy of Sciences

panel 6: Low-Carbon Futures, part 2

Stéphanie Barral, INRAE

Mu-Jeong Kho, University College London

Pablo Nemiña, National University of San Martín

Minseo Cho, University of Wisconsin-Madison

April 19

panel 7: Sociologies of Finance, part 2

Neil Warner, London School of Economics

Rohan Advani, University of California-Los Angeles

Adam Hayes, University of Lucerne

Walker Kahn, University at Buffalo

panel 8: Theoretical Horizons, part 2

Luis Flores, Harvard University

Francesco Laruffa, Sociological Research Institute Göttingen

Petras Shelton-Zumpano, Melbourne University

program

with support from the Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison